Cultures of participation and the advent of the citizen expert in modern democracies

该研究项目涉及现代民主国家公民专家的出现，即普通公民被赋予专家和社会代表的双重角色，并被称为“服务用户”、“基于经验的专家”或“公民科学家”。公民专家实践有望挖掘闲置的知识资源，同时让“在现场”的人参与进来，从而有可能使知识和决策“民主化”。该项目回应了对这一问题所做的少量研究，以及人们对这一现象的普遍热情。它需要一个政治科学的视角来审视这些实践的民主合法性和知识质量。主要的问题是：与公民专业知识相关的高期望在多大程度上经得起仔细审视？在什么条件下，这些实践既能赋予权力和包容性，又能启发和解决问题？该项目研究了三个国家（挪威、德国和英国）的公民专家实践，这三个国家在公众参与和民主复兴方面存在重大差异。实证分析包括探索不同的参与性文化和民主创新的使用，对公众参与和更具体的公民专家参与的理由进行框架分析，以及基于访谈和文件分析对气候变化和卫生政策领域的案例进行绩效检查。在理论方面，主要建立在民主理论、知识方法社会学和制度与决策理论之上。

The research project deals with the advent of citizen experts in modern democracies, i.e. ordinary citizens that are attributed the double role of an expert and a societal representative and are addressed as ‘service users’, ‘experience-based experts’ or ‘citizen scientists’. Citizen expertise practices promise to tap into idle knowledge resources and involve the people ‘on the ground’ at the same time, thus potentially ‘democratising’ knowledge and decision-making.The project responds to the little research done on the issue and the utter enthusiasm the phenomenon is generally met with. It takes a political science perspective that scrutinizes the democratic legitimacy and knowledge quality of these practices.The leading questions are: In how far do the high expectations associated with citizen expertise hold at closer look? Under which conditions can these practices be both empowering and inclusive as well as enlightening and problem-solving? The project studies citizen expertise practices in three countries that differ substantively in their approaches to public participation and democratic renewal (Norway, Germany and the UK). The empirical analysis comprises an exploration of the different participatory cultures and uses of democratic innovations, a frame analysis of justifications given for public participation, and for citizen expert involvement more specifically, as well as a performance check of cases operating in the climate change and health policy field that is based on interviews and document analysis. In theoretical terms, democratic theories, sociology of knowledge-approaches and institutional and decision-making theories are built on primarily.